Carpets (or other fabrics) are tufted or woven using many hundreds of threadlines of yarn (depending on the width of the fabric and the fiber spacing) that are supplied from yarn wound on multiple beams or from singles packages arranged in some sort of creel. For small lot production this is time consuming and expensive since the same large number of threadlines must be provided for each yarn across the width of the fabric and must be prepared by making many short yardage beams or rewinding the yarn into a very large number of smaller packages (or alternately the supplier can produce smaller yarn packages, but at greatly increased production cost). The small lots also result in a larger number of tufter or loom changeovers, resulting in lost machine capacity and lower yields from the transition time and waste from pulling through the transition yarn knots.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,634,585 to William O. Ingram, III (Compact Creel—Oct. 21, 2003) describes a compact, mobile creel that can be prestocked with a large number of small size packages of yarn and moved to the tufter when changing to the next production order. This apparatus accentuates any tension plucks as the yarn is removed from the packages that can cause carpet tufting or weaving defects and limit the processing speed due to the yarn routing from the tube surface back through a plastic tube that passes through the yarn core. As the size of the fabric being produced decreases the diameter of the supply yarn packages is largely fixed by the diameter of the package paper/plastic core and the space needed to store the supply packages per pound of yarn rapidly increases. Space must also be provided between adjacent packages of yarn so that the threadlines do not become entangled when the yarn is removed from the packages. Vertical orientation of the packages above each other allows the yarn to drop down when the machine is stopped onto the packages below despite the horizontal monofilament separating threadlines provided, which can cause machine outages due to capture of threadlines from the adjacent packages when the machine is restarted. This results in higher shipping costs and increased warehouse and operating room requirements.
Tube banks or sample creels have also been used for making very small production lots. In this method plastic pipe or paper tube storage containers are connected to each of the threadlines going into the tufter or loom. Yarn is taken from large size supply packages and is blown into the top of each of the containers with a compressed air yarn entrainment device. Only a very limited length of yarn can be placed in the tubes, and frequent problems with entangling of the yarn when it is withdrawn are encountered. In practice this method is only used for small sample machines and for short lengths of tufted or woven fabric. These devices are commercially available from a number of equipment suppliers and are well known in the industry.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,759,010 to Beryl Aaron Boggs (Screw Jet Pack For Textile Fibers—1973), describes an apparatus for placing single ends of yarn into a plastic casing which can later be stripped off when fiber is to be used. This is a complex system and no method for producing many small length packages and effectively using them on a tufter or loom is disclosed.
There are a number of US Patents to Joseph E. Koskol, et al. —Apparatus And Process For Packaging Yarn And Product Therefrom (U.S. Pat. No. 4,863,029) and Apparatus and Process For Forming A Wad Of Yarn (U.S. Pat. No. 4,956,901). These describe a method for forming wads of compacted yarn and placing them in layered yarn packages. The equipment is complex and was purposed at packaging large quantities of yarn rather than a large number of very small packages of yarn. There is also concern about changing the supply yarn appearance or properties by passing it through a wad forming jet using high velocity air or steam and post processing at elevated temperatures when further compacting the yarn before packaging.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,081,888 to Hasegawa et al. describes an apparatus for producing compact yarn packages. This process uses an off-center (eccentric) introduction of yarn and pressing head on the opposite side of a cylindrical accumulation chamber to compact yarn packages, as well as other features. Motive gas used to place yarn in the chamber escapes from top section of the accumulation chamber, and steam is used as a heating fluid. This is a complex mechanism whose purpose was to produce a block of yarn that was much higher in weight than required to accomplish the objectives of small lot carpet or fabric fabrication.
U.S. Pat. No. 2,741,009 to Slayter and Anderson describes dropping filaments of yarn (specifically glass fiber) into an open top container that has perforations on the sides and bottom to permit air removal by a blower to hold the fibers in place and more tightly pack them. Packaging in this manner would result in too low a density for BCF or other similar fibers, and the containers would be too large for practical use to supply tufting or weaving equipment.
GB1217671 to Waring describes a process for handling wool during scouring, dyeing, and other downstream processing, where yarn is introduced into a cage made of metal mesh via a compressed air powered pulling device, and then the yarn is compacted by pulling air from the bottom of the cage by a fan. Packaging in this manner would result in too low a density for BCF or other similar fibers, so containers too large for practical use to supply tufting or weaving equipment with a large number of packages of yarn are needed for weaving or tufting.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,085,881 to Roberson describes a device for processing glass fibers that uses air exhausted from the sides and bottom of a canister to hold spun fibers in place and compact them to a higher density. Includes description of control mechanisms to produce package of fiber that is claimed to be of uniform density. Packaging in this manner would result in too low a density for BCF or other similar fibers, and the containers produced would be too large for practical use to supply tufting or weaving equipment.
EP58478 to Lowe and Brinton describes an apparatus for filling containers of yarn for use in making patterned fabrics for small quantity contract end uses where the lengths of the yarn may be controlled separately for each container to minimize waste. Further, the vertically oriented containers are fixed together on movable trolleys holding typically 288 tubular containers. The yarn is conveyed into the receiving chamber via an air jet and the air allowed to escape from the bottom through perforated, movable gates. The density of the yarn is then increased via pressing with a ram, the gates are opened, and the yarn pushed into a second container which has a perforated bottom plate. The trolley is indexed to allow filling a portion of the tubular containers from a smaller number of yarn supply devices. A sufficient number of trolleys containing the large number of tubular containers are moved to a carpet loom where the individual threadlines are routed to the loom via individual plastic tubes. EP58478 teaches placing the yarn into the container via a high velocity jet powered by compressed air, and then allowing the air to pass through the accumulated mass of yarn at the bottom of the container before passing out through perforated gates. The expansion of the compressed air as it leaves the jet and enters the container will lead to recirculation and possible tangling of the yarn as it falls into the container. This becomes especially problematic as the mass of yarn builds up in the container and the pressure drop across the mass of yarn increases, or as the amount of compressed air must be increased to attain higher yarn processing speeds. The height of yarn that can be accumulated in the container is limited by stirring or entangling of the surface of the yarn wad as the amount of compressed air must be increased to overcome the pressure drop of the yarn mass as the vertical height increases. This limits the density of the yarn mass that can be obtained, necessitating mechanical compaction of the wad with its associated complexity in order to store a reasonable amount of yarn in a compact container. Snagging or catching of the yarn on the pair of perforated gates at the bottom of upper container is also likely problematic for finer denier fibers as the wad of yarn is pushed from the upper to the lower container.